Billed as a Dark Ages Vampire Starting Adventure to inspire any new or existing game group, this 40 page softcover book is set in the Midlands of England with the Vampires working for Mithras, Prince of London attempting to convince a dying Lord to leave his lands and property to Mithras, rather than the Brujah of the region.
As with most of the White Wolf role-playing “horror” games, I’ve always found them to be fascinating to read, but am always left wondering what the hell am I going to do with this? I have had extensive experience and interest in running historical games as well as Werewolf:The Apocalypse, so I knew the rules and can handle big, effective characters. But this little adventure should have been something special, a springboard to other great things, but despite an open ended system of encounters, with many lead ins and a couple of lead outs, and optional encounters, its essentially a rail-roaded adventure with little real flair or feeling for the setting. It does provide opportunities to take the adventure beyond the setting, but these are no more than sentences at the end campaign book rather than fleshed out stories and adventures, and certainly not a springboard to a campaign. It does, for example, hint that the heroes could follow the Brujah back to the midlands but there is nothing more written on the subject or the setting in any of the Dark Ages publications.
Another feature of the adventure is that it is meant for new and inexperienced storytellers, but instead of helping out as a good introductory adventure should, it instead becomes a burden upon the storyteller to keep track of half a dozen NPCs and their motivations and opinions of each of the players. Whilst this may be the de-facto in every Vampire game, to push this straight onto a new storyteller without some advice on handling this aspect now and in the future is a little disappointing. A simple introduction of a chart, table or form to assist the storyteller in deciding how each of the NPCs react to the players, and how those reactions change over the period of the adventure would be immensely helpful. If I ran the game again I would do this as it eliminates a lot of the social book-keeping that is required of a Vampire game.
Essentially this scenario is a series of six medium-sized encounters which the characters have a surprising amount of control over. Whilst this is a good thing from the players view, it can wreck the game in minutes, and therefore fails as an intro-game for new players and especially new storytellers. All the encounters bar one is negotiation. One good thing is that the game allows immense room for the storyteller to add lots of extra encounters and details, which I did, but again I’m viewing this game from the point of view of a new storyteller. One throwaway character/encounter became a hook/liability for the players. Instead of slaughtering a young family, they instead took pity and preserved the life of the young children (with a decent church education) whilst allowing the parents to fall foul of a hideous disease ruining the county.
Each of the six encounters is prefaced by a “how we got here” intro, as the unfolding of events can be different. Allies can be enemies.
1 Meeting with Mithras’ agent in London and travel to Midlands
2 Arrival on the outskirts, the village and meeting with Jillian and her brothers
3 Arrival at the castle
4 First night
5 Second night
6 End fight at the Abbey
We managed to complete the game in two sessions of three to four hours each. The book is priced a bit too high considering the value, as apart from the castle layouts there is little reason to return to this book once finished.
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